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Trends and drivers of change in the EU transport and logistics sector: Scenarios

This report sets out four different scenarios for the European transport and logistics sector. Scenarios depict plausible
hypotheses about the future; thus, they are useful tools for forecasting, analysing and formulating policy, as well as for
strategic planning in private companies and among the social partners. In a rapidly changing and complex world – where
demand and supply change equally fast – planning for the future cannot rely on simple projections of past trends.
Alternative views of the future can help to broaden the understanding of issues that need to be addressed today. Scenario
methodology provides such alternative views by embracing the uncertainty inherent in the future.
A scenario is a coherent description of possible outcomes of the drivers, trends and events that may influence and change
the shape of analysis over a given period of time. Scenario analyses and exercises do not aim to predict the future but
rather to describe possible alternative future outcomes. Given the uncertainty of the future, it should be clearly stated
that any scenario is only a possibility, as likely or unlikely as many others.
Tensions between short-term considerations and long-term visions and strategies often affect policymaking. Scenarios
are a way of developing more robust, innovative and future-oriented good practices for particular future outcomes.
Although scenarios are often set in a 10 to 15-year perspective, they can act as a navigation tool and early warning
system for current realities. Scenario building can also point to ideas and methods for putting into operation knowledge
generated from case studies and market studies. While scenario-analysis may be a valuable tool for insight and future
literacy, as well as a catalyst for strategic discussion, it should not be regarded as an end in itself.

Publish Date:

2008

Publisher:

Eurofound: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

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